Thursday 12 January 2017

Nigeria - No love affair between Nigeria and Aid agencies!

We might be seeing an acrimonious relationship develop between the Nigerian government and Aid agencies. There seems to be a gap between the activities of Aid agencies and that of the agenda of the Northeastern Nigerian states that these agencies are operating in. One of the state governors,  Kashim Shettima,  was quoted saying "We hardly know what the UN agencies are doing. We only see them in some white flashy bullet-proof jeeps; apart from that, we hardly see their visible impacts."

The governor also stated that most aid groups operating in Nigeria's north-east were wasting funds meant to help victims of the Islamist Boko Haram insurgency and only eight of 126 registered agencies in Borno state were there to genuinely help, said.

The governor accused some agencies of concentrating too much on the camps for those displaced by the conflict.

The Nigeria's Premium Times newspaper quoted the governor stating that "We are in the post-conflict phase of insurgency era where we are concentrating on recovery, reconstruction and rehabilitation. But the foreign NGOs have near fixation on the IDP camps,".

Last month, Nigeria's President Muhammdu Buhari accused the UN and aid agencies of deliberately exaggerating the humanitarian crisis and whipping up "a non-existent fear of mass starvation" to get more funds.

Last month, the UN launched a $1bn (£825,000) appeal for those facing hunger and starvation in the region.

Governor Shettima even called for those agencies only there to profit "from the agony of our people" to leave.

The trouble is that the aid agencies often have their own agendas which sometimes, is totally tangent from that of the countries that they go to 'help'. 



Culled from bbc.co.uk

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